1. Field
This invention relates to graphics hardware resources, and particularly to methods, systems and computer program products for graphics hardware resource usage in a fully virtualized computing environment.
2. Description of Background
Currently, information technology (IT) is driving consolidation of computing infrastructures on servers, creating fully virtualized data centers with integrated provisioning facilities. In a fully virtualized data center, servers are configured to run operating systems and applications inside virtual machines on top of a hypervisor software layer, which is a virtual machine monitor or virtualization platform that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer at the same time. As several visualization-related workloads require 3D graphics hardware acceleration, it is necessary to provide management and provisioning mechanisms that apply to 3D graphics resources in a virtualized environment, which is a feature not present in the current generation of virtual IT infrastructures.